“Continuing our way,” says M. de Séguiran, “we arrived at the house of the lord of Boyer, gentleman of the king’s chamber, which house we found in a state of defence, in case of a descent of the corsairs,--having a terrace in front, facing the port, and on it twelve pieces of cast iron, several pieces of less calibre, and two swivel-guns, and in the said house four hundred pounds of powder, two hundred balls, two pairs of armour, and twelve muskets and short pikes. “At Bormez and at St. Tropez,” says M. de Séguiran, further on, “commerce is so seriously injured that it cannot amount to ten thousand pounds, which is a consequence not only of the poverty of the inhabitants, but also of the invasions made by pirates, who enter their ports almost every day, so that very often vessels are compelled to touch port, in order that the men who man them may escape, or the inhabitants of the place arm themselves. “At Martignes, a community which has suffered great losses in the persons of its inhabitants,--esteemed the best and most courageous seamen on the Mediterranean,--many of them have been made slaves by the corsairs of Algiers and Tunis, who practise their piracies more than ever, in the sight of the forts and fortresses of that province.” The reader can imagine the contempt of these Barbary pirates for the forts on the coast, when he knows that the seashore was in such a deplorable state of defence that M. de Séguiran says, in another passage of his report to Cardinal Richelieu: “The next day, January 24th, at seven o’clock in the morning, we went to the fortified castle named Cassis, belonging to the Lord Bishop of Marseilles, where we found that the entire garrison consisted of a porter only, a servant of the said bishop, who showed us the place, and where there were only two small pieces of ordnance, one of which had been emptied.” Later, the Archbishop of Bordeaux made the same remark in reference to one of the strongest positions of Toulon. “The first and most important of these forts,” says the warrior prelate in his report, “is an old tower where there are two batteries, in which fifty cannon and two hundred soldiers could be placed; there are good cannon within, but all are dismounted, and no ammunition, except what was sent by order of your Eminence [Cardinal Richelieu] fifteen days ago. The commandant is a simple, good man, who has for garrison only his wife and her servant, and, according to what he says, he has not received a farthing in twenty years.” Such was the state of things a few years before Cardinal Richelieu was invested by Louis XIII. with the office of grand master in chief and general superintendent of the navigation and commerce of France.